When asked in a Bloomberg TV interview if he is considering bailing out FTX and if so would such a deal involve debt, equity investments or a full takeover, Tron founder Justin Sun said the first step is due diligence and understanding the full picture of FTX and once that is clear, all those options are possible. He declined to elaborate on any talks he may be in with FTX.
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Fast facts
- The Tron founder said he is currently unsure of the amount required to save the beleaguered exchange, but estimates it to be in the billions.
- The figure has been increasing through the week, with Reuters reporting on Friday that FTX is on a US$9.4 billion raise.
- Sun said his current priority is the evaluation of the situation.
- “Basically we will take care of our customer first, and then we will start to measure [the situation], start to see what we can do here; basically we don’t wanna commit too much in the first step,” said Sun, who claimed he is mulling a different approach to help FTX than that attempted by Binance.
- Sun could be the second white knight for FTX, after Changpeng Zhao and his exchange Binance abandoned rescue efforts following a review of FTX’s finances.
- On Thursday, Tron set up a credit facility that allows FTX customers that hold Tron-based tokens, TRX, BTT, JST, SUN and HT, to swap assets from the exchange 1:1 to external wallets.
See related article: FTX liquidity crunch leads to contagion fears; Friday updates and running commentary